An incorrigible Cognitive Dissident

NEWSCORP SPECIAL: Murdoch hires his own inhouse drug trafficker.

….and then runs this headline:

I’d be willing to be that not many people noticed the latest addition to the Newscorp board of directors: Alvaro Uribe, the former President of Colombia.

If nothing else, the Digger never does thing by halves: probably the single most influential and divisive figure in the history of Colombian politics, Uribe is the eldest son of the late landowner Alberto Uribe Sierra. Sierra’s criminal connections led to his violent death at the hand of leftist guerrillas in 1983. According to the investigative journalist Fabio Castillo, at the time of his death he was known as a “recognized trafficker”, and wanted for extradition to the U.S.

Uribe’s career has been the subject of speculation, rumour and accusation regarding his links to Pablo Escobar and the Medellin drugs Cartel. It was after he was made Director of Civil Aviation in 1980 that the rumours began, because Uribe’s appointment coincided with the rise of Escobar as an international trafficker.

What’s more, Uribe has tried but failed to explain satisfactorily the unusually high number of pilot’s licenses and airstrip construction permits issued on his watch. Spookily, most of them were used by drug barons, and are widely cited as a major contributing factor to Escobar’s success. According to Escobar’s former lover Virginia Vallejo, the drug lord held Uribe in high regard for establishing the infrastructure to transport cocaine to the U.S..

So given the Newscorp penchant for bribing coppers (and pols with a penchant for white powder) Alvaro is going to feel entirely at home in Digger HQ.

Since Hackgate, there’s been a self-destructive additional dimension of poison in Rupert Murdoch’s psyche. Not only is everything he does now designed to say to any sovereign power “stop me if you dare”; the brazen use of his media titles to achieve his warped ambitions becomes more amazing as time passes. In the piece underneath today’s front page lead, the Times argues that drug use ‘can be beneficial and should be decriminalised’ – and manages a major in-joke dig by adding at one point ‘David Cameron said in Opposition that drugs policy has been failing for decades’. It adds that ‘the Report’ from which it quotes (never identified) ‘is a first step on the road to decriminalising all drugs.

Which may well be very good for Colombian exports. But I can’t imagine how it will help a society already riddled with every form of escapism and delusion.

Truly, Mr Murdoch is an amazing man. An amazing man who must be stopped.

The problem is,also,Rupe’s addiction to non voting shares at Newscorp,thus keeping the Murdoch clan in place for ever,living the high life at the expense of the MAJORITY shareholders,a practice that was outlawed in London years ago.

The criminals already have a very nice sideline in the protection racket. The number of criminal security firms looking after building sites so they don’t spontaneously combust, is staggering. Every major city in the country. The police will not stop it, although they know who controls these businesses. I have no evidence, but would be very surprised if every pub and club doesn’t pay out something every week. I remember when a group of Bulgarians and Kosovans started knocking on pub doors offering to look after the wellbeing of the licensees, they were eventually found in a crumpled heap in an alley.
The saving grace is our friends in the rackets currently don’t charge high fees, but that will change if other sources of revenue drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, girls, tanning salons ever dries up a little.
We are only ever a few months away from being a completely lawless society. (weeks if you threaten food supplies)

If you decriminalise the taking of drugs you aren’t actually legalising. I know it’s semantics but its important if you want to get users to register and be prescribed a dose of their particular ‘snuff’ that they aren’t doing something illegal..

If you reduce the number of people who access illegal drugs by half, you are putting a big dent in someone’s back pocket and freeing up resources to track down more of the buggers that bring it in. If more than 50% take up the offer of prescription dosage then you really are hitting their pocket and as an incidental, reducing the health care costs too with HIV transmission reduced as well as hepatitis and a number of other dangerous and costly diseases.

The decriminalisation route should not be auto rejected as encouragement to abuse. I recognise it is an emotive subject but it needs thinking about since we are having absolutely no success in stopping the stuff coming in.

Yes, this will solve all our problems. Hook everyone overnight on addictive drugs while having and maintaining the leverage at any time to take those drugs away. “Nice little populace, nice nice little populace; there, there, be good now, behave yourselves little boys and girls, yes, you are a cute little populace, yes, yes, run along now … .” And some people complain about the level of government control now? And of course they can then sell ‘soma’ or whatever they want to test out on every street corner — lets not even get into the diabolic applications of combining nanotechnology with things ingestible via mouth or needle in the context of world wide micro wave modulations — no, trust big brother. I do. We all do.

It would be in a very very different context than when old Sherlock was shooting himself up in the late nineteenth century is all I’m saying, being someone who normally would take the point of view that criminalizing these things was as bungled a thing to do as was prohibition in the 1920’s US. Criminalizing drugs was a dastardly means of social control say many people — declare thus and so illegal, then ‘presto, you’re under arrest, mate!’ But decriminalizing them in the context of today’s state of knowledge is possibly an even more severe form of social control, and aside from the tin-hat sounding stuff, a way to encourage complete abnegation of self-discipline and reliance or discovery of one’s true mettle.

Personally I thing the headline is related to the ‘drug war’ and US immigration policies or lack thereof. It is something far too fraught politically to discuss openly, but I’ll give old Rupert credit and the benefit of the doubt for giving it the old college try.

A National Security Archive website which contains a link to what is purported to be a Defence Intelligence Agency report listing Uribe as number 82 among the ‘more important Colombian narco-traffickers’.

Oooh my days… I’ve heard it all now. Uribe and Murdoch… I lived in Colombia for six months when Uribe was in power. Any opponent or journalist who asked difficult questions would be greeted with ‘well, maybe you are with the FARC (the Left wing guerillas)’ and a few days or weeks later that person would show up dead.

The internal refugee crisis accelerated under Uribe as the paramilitaries (the Right wing death squads originally set up to protect big landowners) turned guns for hire to multinationals who wanted valuable land cleared of troublesome farmers and indigenous people. Uribe himself had been involved in creating one of these groups – the Covivirs. Colombia now has 4 million refugees rotting in shanty towns around the main cities. The government tries to blame this on fighting with the FARC, and it is true that the guerillas lost their ideology long ago, but the reality is there are regular massacres in areas where the FARC are not present. I last visited in 2010 and I met with a friend who was the AP correspondent there. He had just been at the coast where there had been ten massacres the previous week.

The Parapolitics scandal showed that a third of the congressmen had links to the paramilitaries and that DAS, the country’s intelligence service was passing information to the death squads about dissident politicians and academics – the latter obviously ending up dead.

I remember watching a ‘consejo communal’ (community council) on TV whereby Uribe would visit a part of the country and hold a press conference with the local head honchos etc. A man stood up and said, ‘Mr President, I am the mayor of ####, that man over there (pointing) wants to kill me. He is working with this man (pointing) who is a narco trafficker and they both work with that man who is a paramilitary. Please help me, Mr President’.

A few days later the Mayor was dead and a few weeks later one of the man he had pointed out, was made Ambassador to one of Colombia’s neighbours…

Now, can you imagine the flack Chavez would get for all this?

Anyway… Uribe… advisor to Murdoch… shiver…

I wonder what interest the banks have in legalising drugs…They’ve done very well out of them being illegal after all. Two excellent articles by David Malone on this:

Is it just coincidence, but a bill legalising cannabis & other ‘soft’ drugs is going through the French parliament. That is to say that the government want to just put it through without a debate, but the education minister wants to have one.
Can the slimy hands of the toads in Brussels be behind this? Are we shortly to hear this kite being flown in the hollowed halls of Jestminster? Is it in fact a EU directive?
Perhaps they aren’t content with the young being ‘dumbed down’, they want them ‘drugged up’ as well?
Na, I’m just being paranoid………

Dark Alliance is an incredible book. The author, Gary Webb, always said he never understood the Chomsky model of media propaganda because he had always been rewarded for uncovering wrong doing in high places. After what happened to him in the wake of Dark Alliance (which won the Pulitzer Prize) he concluded that he had never discovered anything serious enough…

Gary was reported to have committed suicide in 2004. Which is a bit odd because he had two bullet wounds to the head.

But that’s the point, they no longer would have to fund their hopeless addiction and certainly not by criminal means and, if some in the drug trade changed careers there would be more resource available by the dramatic reduction of drug related crime. There has to be another way, the current framework is not fit for purpose, I’m sure my idea is flawed but, I think it could be made to work by those with finer minds, of course the US establishment would fight tooth and nail to prevent the UK from making such a move.

Mmmm. But it wouldn’t just disappear, would it? A certain amount of it would, to be sure, as hopeless addicts are no longer required to fund their dependency, but the major criminals who currently make their money from drugs would of necessity need to make their money elsewhere – and it’s not really very likely that this will be in lawful activity.

This isn’t to say that decriminalisation is necessarily a bad thing, just that if it’s considered to be a way of turning bad crooks into law-abiding citizens, then think again. We need also to pay some attention to what these people are most likely to get involved in if illegal drug supply is no longer open to them. It might be even worse!

Old Rupe is like an infinite number of monkeys given typewriters, they will eventually write the works of Shakespeare and, in his case, get something right every so often. Celebrity scumbags is fine with me as well as drug decriminalisation.

Actually the evidence that I have seen supports the view that users should be decriminalised and instead offered rehab help rather than jail.

See Portugal’s drug policy brought in 2001 and Operation Reduction in Brighton started in 2005. Both show that criminalisation doesn’t work, costs 3 times as much and don’t stop habitual users from using drugs. Our governments current approach to heron addiction is to provide a more addictive substance, methodrone, even though figures show this doesn’t work and is just used as another drug in the cocktail of substances these people are addicted to.

Have a look at Russell Brand’s recent documentary about his addiction and experiences of going through rehab to become clean. It’s very interesting and I have to say the government comes off very poorly in it’s beliefs that methadone is working despite the figures.

Considering drug offences are the 2nd highest category of crime for convicts, with violent offences first, this does not take into account those offences committed to fund a drug habit.

Then there are all the issues around the fact that prohibition doesn’t work, it just forces the practices underground, away from the safety of society and in to the hands of criminals providing them huge amounts of money. Think about alcohol prohibition in the US, prostitution and abortions to name a few.

Considering how broke the government is and the fact that people have always taken drugs and will continue to take drugs, providing a regulated place, where quality, quantity and rehab assistance if required would force drugs out in the open and away from criminals.

Heroin is in effect already legalised, free and costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds per year by way of Methadone and Subutex substitutes prescribed on the NHS free to registered addicts. Even with this scheme in use many still continue to buy and use street Heroin. With addiction you always want more.

The War on Drugs is the biggest con foisted on taxpayers since prohibition. By creating monopoly profits it fosters corruption of the political class, the police, the judiciary and the prison industrial complex. Regulation and educatiion a la alcohol ande tobacco are the way forward bur alas it cuts into the pols payola. Increased liberalisatiion is coming though by hook or by crook. The Kofi Annan, Paul Volcker report last year for the UN is a powerful straw in the wind that old Rupe’s attenae seem to have picked up.

kfc
Cable does himself no favours by assuming the mantle of Senna the Soothsayer.
That what he says is of any relevance at all is entirely due to Ludicrous Cameronious making such a pigs lug of the last election.
Titter ye not! (As Vivian Creegor apparently omitted saying to DLT.)

The war on drugs is a big failure though.
Columbia is a prime example of a nation practically in anarchy due to it.
As for the tired old gateway drug about cannabis ,well surely the fact that it is illegal is more likely to bring users into contact with harder drugs.
No valid argument there.
Here’s an excellent illustrative presentation which I think is on the money here.
Hat tip to the Dick Pudlecotte blog.

The only thing stopping the sensible idea of decriminalisation are public attitudes hardened by years of demonisation and probably the Daily Mail, you know the paper that seems to think we all spend the night lying in the gutter in a puddle of urine and vomit.
Strange, I don’t do that ?

@kfc1404
Totally agree, keep it simple and 9/10 times it works.
Turkey had a similar problem with school truancy as the UK.
answer, if the pupil did not have a 90% attendance rate, the family allowance was docked till the pupil achieved 90%+. Problem sorted, no need for expensive Social Workers, Policy Committees etc.
But i do like the idea of showing kids what life is like without a decent education. But would the old boys network prevent the P**b’s from moving up the ladder over in the UK?

It is reckoned that a sum of $1 billion dollars of drug money is laundered thru’ Wall St. each year. It is also believed that drug money was the only liquidity available during the Great Financial Crash.
The War on Drugs is just a smoke screen, to balance out the distribution. The CIA was the biggest drug runner into the USA , out of Mena ,Arkansas, during Clintons time as Governor and George Bush Snr time as vice President & President.
Bush of course is an ex CIA director. This drug money was used to finance the Iran-Contra arms purchases.( Google-Dark Alliance)
Too many of TPTB are making money from this trade for it to be ever legalised. The great British Tai-pans out of Hong Kong,started as opium runners into China in the 1800’s. The CIA have been running dope out of the Golden Triangle and Afghanistan to finance their operations in Vietnam and elsewhere for many years Nothing changes where money and power is involved.

I wonder how decriminalizing drug possession or growing your own cannabis (to crowd out the main stream dealers) is going to impact wider crime figures at the same time the Government choose to reduce police numbers?

There are other well known facts about drugs, namely that many who dabble in the “soon to be legal” soft-drugs, quickly move on to harder drugs to try and regain the initial euphoria.

Unfortunately, all of these drugs need to be paid for, so surely a rise in muggings and robberies by drug fuelled junkies has been factored into the “legalise” argument? or don’t the Government care because drugs will by then be legal and they already don’t care about muggings and robberies?

I personally have always believed that all drugs should be free and legal, take the criminal element right out of the drugs trade, in fact there wouldn’t be a drugs trade at all. Think of all the crime that is drug related just disappearing? I would have of these empty high st shops nicely kitted out and staffed by qualified health professionals who would give out clean needles in a warm and comfortable environment, who would pay for this I hear you ask? Well, just removing the burden from the judiciary would easlily cover it I’m sure, I would also ask the insurance companies to contribute as it would be in their interest too.
Then, I would have all the local schools take out all of the kids regularly and make sure that they were walked past this high st. establishment to see the state of the users inside, I personally think would start to be the end of drug addiction.
When I was living in Chile the educational system had a similar scheme in operation, only it was education they were after encouraging in the kids, they used to take them out in buses and trawl them around the poor areas and the wealthy areas. You should have seen those kids, never had their noses out of a book.
Just a thought, now where did I leave my stash…?

Agreed but by whom? We do not have even ONE influential global player that is remotely interested in stopping the likes of Digger even if they were able. We are looking for a selfless, powerfull, motivated, far sighted, morally sound, incorruptible individual that hasn’t got his snout in the trough or a desire to rule the world…..an oxymoron I know. Where the hell is Clark Kent when you need him.

He does identify it, it’s this one http://www.ukdpc.org.uk/publication/a-fresh-approach/
“A Fresh Approach to Drugs: the final report of the UK Drug Policy Commission
In this report, UKDPC proposes a radical rethink of how we structure our response to drug problems. It provides an analysis of the evidence for how policies and interventions could be improved, with recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to address the new and established challenges associated with drug use.

UKDPC aims to foster a fresh approach to drug policy: one in which evidence takes priority, creating light rather than heat in the debate on drugs, so that we can create an environment that works to reduce dependence on drugs, safeguards communities and delivers value for money.”